Oregon, ho!
Our move-in date was March 15th. We decided to get into the new digs as close to that date as we possibly could, considering we were going to be paying rent on the place whether we were here by then or not. So the plan was that I would fly down to So Cal to help the GF and her BFF load up and drive to the Bay Area where my stuff was waiting. Wait, I should explain a few things first...
The "plan" was this: I fly down. There would be 4 of us driving from So Cal to Nor Cal. We would be traveling in 2 vehicles - A 16-foot moving truck, and GF's car. It was decided that the male BFF would travel with me in the moving truck, and the female BFF would travel in the car with GF. Then, when we got to the Bay Area, there would be an additional vehicle involved (my car), so the arrangements would shift to GF and female BFF in GF's car, male BFF in moving truck, and me in my car. 4 people, 3 vehicles. Got it? Confusing, I know, but hold on, because it gets even goofier.
So I get to So Cal, and find out that the female BFF can't make it. Totally understandable and not a big deal at all. We'd just need to fine tune "the plan" a little. No worries. Then it comes to light that the male BFF can't make it to GF's place in time, so we would need to pick him up along the way. Again, not a huge deal. GF, female BFF and I loaded up the moving truck for the first half of our trek, I took off in said truck, and GF would pick up male BFF on her way. No worries.
We make it to the Bay Area in fairly good time. I actually beat them due to an unforeseen cat incident in their car along the way. Seems one of the two got loose in the car at some point and hilarity/frustration ensued. Kinda glad I missed it.
Oh, and we had hoped to get on the road by noon so that we could be in the Bay Area by 7-ish. Totally didn't happen. I didn't leave in the truck until after 5pm. We were really hoping to get to my parents' place before they went to bed. When I pulled in, an hour before they pulled in, it was 1:30 and the parents had been in bed for probably2 hours. Again, not a big deal. But to say that the three of us were tired would be like saying the plague was kind of a bummer.
I'm not even going to get into the howling match between my GF's cats on one side of a door and my cat on the other. Suffice to say I had to lock my cat in the bathroom over night. She was pissed, at least for a little while. GF's cats were freaking out the whole time. Not in a spazzy way, but more like a quiet and reserved "what is happening?" kind of way. Poor guys. But I'll have you know right here and now that they made it here okay and are doing their best to adjust. My cat is still in the Bay Area, which is fine. She's more my mom's cat now anyway. They watch tv together. It's cute.
So we spend the next day packing up my ton o' crap into the truck. It takes for-freaking-ever. I have a ton of crap. We even left some crap behind. Including... my car. Which is really just as well, as you'll read about in the next installment.
We before we packed up we wanted to go have Korean food for lunch, only when we got there it was closed because it was Sunday. So we went to Chinese buffet instead and all of us overate to the point of stupidity. A nap was most certainly in order. Wait... did we eat before or after we packed? Must have been after. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was after. Honestly, I don't even remember. It was a crazy fistful of days there in a row.
So we get back to my parents' house and decide to nap for a bit before taking off. We wanted to be on the road by 10pm so that we could be at our new apartment complex in the morning while the leasing agents were still there to let us in and all that. Surprisingly we left only about an hour behind schedule.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. Seems like a good place to take a break from writing this out. But let me just say that the party is only just about to start. Coming up... night blindness and the wrath of God in Calamityville.
Stay tuned...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Portland
Went to Portland this morning.
We got there in pretty good time and were parked and ready to hit Powell's in no time. Powell's, by the way, is a book store that covers an entire city block. It's something like 5 stories high and crammed to the gills with books of all sorts.
So anyway, we get there and start looking around. I get all geeky about the books I want to look up but can't remember what they were or who they were by. This happens to me all the freaking time. I go bounding from room to room and we make our selections. Unfortunately the place seemed to be populated with a few more rude persons than I recall there being before, so we made our way to the exit without visiting every room, which is probably just as well since we have very little play money at the moment. It's not like we'll never go back.
Then we ventured into Chinatown. I was all kinds of excited because I remember it being huge and bustling. It was bustling alright. Bustling with shattered memories. It was really kind of sad. The buildings were beautiful, but a great deal of them were abandoned. Okay maybe abandoned is too harsh of a term, but they were definitely empty and in various states of disrepair. It just wasn't as Chinatowny as I remember it being. Fortunately out here in the suburbs there are quite a few more Asian eateries than I recall from before, so maybe the culture is spreading into the populace instead of having a specialty niche area in downtown. Still, it was a touch disheartening.
It was freaking cold as balls and we were getting hungry so we decided to head home after about 2 hours. We only hit an extremely small portion of downtown, but I have to say with great sadness that it was disappointing. Had I built it up in my own head as some kind of Utopia when in reality it was just another city? I refuse to believe that. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind. I think I need to do more investigating. The good part is that I'm looking forward to further investigations, so that's a good sign, right?
We got there in pretty good time and were parked and ready to hit Powell's in no time. Powell's, by the way, is a book store that covers an entire city block. It's something like 5 stories high and crammed to the gills with books of all sorts.
So anyway, we get there and start looking around. I get all geeky about the books I want to look up but can't remember what they were or who they were by. This happens to me all the freaking time. I go bounding from room to room and we make our selections. Unfortunately the place seemed to be populated with a few more rude persons than I recall there being before, so we made our way to the exit without visiting every room, which is probably just as well since we have very little play money at the moment. It's not like we'll never go back.
Then we ventured into Chinatown. I was all kinds of excited because I remember it being huge and bustling. It was bustling alright. Bustling with shattered memories. It was really kind of sad. The buildings were beautiful, but a great deal of them were abandoned. Okay maybe abandoned is too harsh of a term, but they were definitely empty and in various states of disrepair. It just wasn't as Chinatowny as I remember it being. Fortunately out here in the suburbs there are quite a few more Asian eateries than I recall from before, so maybe the culture is spreading into the populace instead of having a specialty niche area in downtown. Still, it was a touch disheartening.
It was freaking cold as balls and we were getting hungry so we decided to head home after about 2 hours. We only hit an extremely small portion of downtown, but I have to say with great sadness that it was disappointing. Had I built it up in my own head as some kind of Utopia when in reality it was just another city? I refuse to believe that. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind. I think I need to do more investigating. The good part is that I'm looking forward to further investigations, so that's a good sign, right?
About the headers...
Just so you know, the headers that I'll be putting up will very rarely have anything at all to do with Oregon or how I feel about Oregon or have any connection of any kind whatsoever with Oregon. I like a lot of stupid crap like metal and horror, so I make headers out of random pictures, but I feel the need to put "In Oregon" in them just so you know what blog you're gawking at. Sometimes there will be a picture of a zombie or something, and some poor sap will be getting his guts chewed out of him, but just because the words "In Oregon" appear in the picture doesn't mean that being in Oregon feels like you're getting your guts chewed out of you by a zombie. It's just a picture. Try not to read too much into my idiocy.
Portland
GF and I are heading into Portland tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. I haven't been there in something like 11 years. I'm curious to see what has changed, but I'm excited to see what hasn't. I know that my favorite eatery, Good Dog Bad Dog, moved closer to the airport not long after I left, so that bums me out, but I'm sure there will be plenty of oishii chow to be had.
I'm pretty sure we're going to primarily stick to West Burnside for now. Too much to see in one trip, dat fo sho. Powell's is a must as GF has never witnessed it. From there I'm sure we'll just hoof it around and see what's what.
I hope I don't get my dumb ass lost all over the place. That's not really the way to impress the dames. Or rather, dame. But knowing me I'm going to be all "hey, there was a cool place over here I wanted to show you," and we'll head in that direction only to find an on-ramp or something retarded. But that's me all over. Everything's an adventure. Whether it's one you happened to want to be on is another thing all together.
I'll update after!
I'm pretty sure we're going to primarily stick to West Burnside for now. Too much to see in one trip, dat fo sho. Powell's is a must as GF has never witnessed it. From there I'm sure we'll just hoof it around and see what's what.
I hope I don't get my dumb ass lost all over the place. That's not really the way to impress the dames. Or rather, dame. But knowing me I'm going to be all "hey, there was a cool place over here I wanted to show you," and we'll head in that direction only to find an on-ramp or something retarded. But that's me all over. Everything's an adventure. Whether it's one you happened to want to be on is another thing all together.
I'll update after!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Music.1
I like to make lists of things. Deal with it. Up yours.
This is a list of some of the music that's been giving me the happies lately:
POSTER CHILDREN - I used to love the crap out of this band back in the early 90's. I seriously thought they could do no wrong. Somehow over the course of time I stopped listening to them: started discovering new music and my tastes changed a little, as always happens with time. I recently went on a quest to find their stuff again, and little did I know that most of their stuff is now out of print and pretty hard to find. I managed to track down a handful of releases that were important to me, and 20 years later this band is still as awesome as I thought they were back then. The funny part is that in the interim I've been writing music in a more pop-ish vein and now that I hear Poster Children again after all this time, I can now see with perfect clarity where I was ripping off all of my own favorite songs from. Heavy-freaking-sigh. Oh well. At least they did it first, and in an infinitely superior manner. Love this freaking band.
SCOTT WALKER - Seriously, how the hell did this guy slip past my earballs unnoticed? I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about music, and I had never heard of this guy. I was cruising through Netflix on my wii and saw this documentary about some guy named Scott Walker, saw that David Bowie was in it, and decided to give it a shot. Apparently he's been around since the early 60's and had a huge impact on some of my favorite artists of all time. And I never heard of him. There are claims that the doc was a hoax perpetuated by Mr. Bowie himself, but if it is then it's the most elaborate hoax I've ever freaking heard of. But still, I have yet to come across ANYBODY who remembers having heard of this guy before. It's just weird. Oh, his music in the 60's was sort of a baroque pop, not unlike the Righteous Brothers and often hinting at Sinatra, but his subject matter was pretty dark. His last two releases have been, well, to call them experimental would be an understatement. But it's all good stuff. I love it. Tremendously.
Yeah, there's other stuff I've been listening to recently, but I REALLY need to get started on dinner. More soon, I freaking swears it!
This is a list of some of the music that's been giving me the happies lately:
POSTER CHILDREN - I used to love the crap out of this band back in the early 90's. I seriously thought they could do no wrong. Somehow over the course of time I stopped listening to them: started discovering new music and my tastes changed a little, as always happens with time. I recently went on a quest to find their stuff again, and little did I know that most of their stuff is now out of print and pretty hard to find. I managed to track down a handful of releases that were important to me, and 20 years later this band is still as awesome as I thought they were back then. The funny part is that in the interim I've been writing music in a more pop-ish vein and now that I hear Poster Children again after all this time, I can now see with perfect clarity where I was ripping off all of my own favorite songs from. Heavy-freaking-sigh. Oh well. At least they did it first, and in an infinitely superior manner. Love this freaking band.
SCOTT WALKER - Seriously, how the hell did this guy slip past my earballs unnoticed? I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about music, and I had never heard of this guy. I was cruising through Netflix on my wii and saw this documentary about some guy named Scott Walker, saw that David Bowie was in it, and decided to give it a shot. Apparently he's been around since the early 60's and had a huge impact on some of my favorite artists of all time. And I never heard of him. There are claims that the doc was a hoax perpetuated by Mr. Bowie himself, but if it is then it's the most elaborate hoax I've ever freaking heard of. But still, I have yet to come across ANYBODY who remembers having heard of this guy before. It's just weird. Oh, his music in the 60's was sort of a baroque pop, not unlike the Righteous Brothers and often hinting at Sinatra, but his subject matter was pretty dark. His last two releases have been, well, to call them experimental would be an understatement. But it's all good stuff. I love it. Tremendously.
Yeah, there's other stuff I've been listening to recently, but I REALLY need to get started on dinner. More soon, I freaking swears it!
Willkommen!!
Howdy!
So, this thing is called "In Oregon" mainly because I'm starting a fresh new blog now that I've moved to Oregon with my awesome GF. The blog itself will probably not have much at all to do with Oregon, but I couldn't think of anything else to call it right now, so I just typed that in and now here we are.
I had another blog that I will probably delete, or cannibalize for this blog, who knows. That one was all kinds of rambling and nonsense, and really this one probably won't be much different other than the fact that I plan on keeping it updated on a regular basis. We'll see how that goes.
So really, this is just the welcome message. I'll get to the moving adventure soon, as well as how we're settling into Oregon. Right now I have to start making dinner. I'm making curry. I freaking love curry.
BTW, I'm Dean. Pleased to meet you.
So, this thing is called "In Oregon" mainly because I'm starting a fresh new blog now that I've moved to Oregon with my awesome GF. The blog itself will probably not have much at all to do with Oregon, but I couldn't think of anything else to call it right now, so I just typed that in and now here we are.
I had another blog that I will probably delete, or cannibalize for this blog, who knows. That one was all kinds of rambling and nonsense, and really this one probably won't be much different other than the fact that I plan on keeping it updated on a regular basis. We'll see how that goes.
So really, this is just the welcome message. I'll get to the moving adventure soon, as well as how we're settling into Oregon. Right now I have to start making dinner. I'm making curry. I freaking love curry.
BTW, I'm Dean. Pleased to meet you.
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